He reveals in 2003 that twice he considered suicide twice as a result of his one-year-old dog Fish tragically been run over.

“Both times it was precipitated by losing my dog.”

Chris Packham

Packham, 54, told the Mirror: “Both times it was precipitated by losing my dog.”

In his book, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, he reveals the only reason he did not go through with it was because he knew he would not succeed in taking an overdose.

He says he was saved after his long-term partner Charlotte Corney bought him two miniature black poodles, Itchy and Scratchy, to help him out of his depression.

In the book he writes: “They loved me so I couldn’t do it. They kept me alive. They did. I owe them my life. I always will.”

He says he had not prepared for losing his dog Fish.

"The whole episode was like some ghastly movie," he wrote.

"I’d been to the football, the dog was in the car and Charlotte said, ‘He loves you so much, he loves you more that I ever could and you love him more than you’ll ever love me.’ “It wasn’t a derogatory remark, she was just regonising the fact that we had this incredibly close bond.

“She dropped us off and within 10 minutes he’d been run over and he died in my arms. And everything fell apart really, that’s the bottom line.

“It was horrendous, the whole process of him dying and having to bury him. It was a mirror image of what had happened with the bird.”

“It’s confusing. You just think you’re like everyone else.”

Chris Packham

He lost his pet kestrel Tem when he was 14 and says it was then he realised he struggled to cope with death.

He added: “The problem was there was all that trauma, nothing was ever done about it. Counselling would have helped but it was the 70s, we just carried on.”

He saw a therapist for two years to help him recover.

His book Fingers in the Sparkle Jar charts his life from six to 16 and shows his struggle with Asperger syndrome and understanding why he was different to other people,

He did not recognise his condition until he was an adult.

The condition led to his passion for wildlife from a young age but he says it confused him.

“It’s confusing. You just think you’re like everyone else," he said.

"Early on I’d play football and ride bikes with the other kids, but by the time I got to adolescence I didn’t really want to be involved with anyone of my own age at all.”

He discovered he had the condition when he was age 34 after noting down a list of the traits and realised he "ticked all the boxes".

Asperger’s syndrome, named after Hans Asperger the Austrian doctor who discovered the condition in 1944, is a development disorder in which sufferers lack social skills, can behave eccentrically and have problems communicating.